Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature
Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature

Author: R. S. White

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-11-28

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0521481422

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Natural law, whether grounded in human reason or divine edict, encourages men to follow virtue and shun vice. The concept dominated Renaissance thought, where its literary equivalent, poetic justice, underpinned much of the period's creative writing. R. S. White's study examines a wide range of Renaissance texts, by More, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare and Milton, in the light of these developing ideas of Natural Law. It shows how writers as radically different as Aquinas and Hobbes formulated versions of Natural Law which served to maintain socially established hierarchies. For Aquinas, Natural Law always resided in the individual's conscience, whereas Hobbes thought individuals had limited access to virtue and therefore needed to be coerced into doing good by the state. White shows how the very flexibility and antiquity of Natural Law enabled its appropriation and application by thinkers of all political persuasions in a debate that raged throughout the Renaissance and which continues in our own time.

Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature
Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature

Author: Brian C. Lockey

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-08-31

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1139458574

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Early modern literature played a key role in the formation of the legal justification for imperialism. As the English colonial enterprise developed, the existing legal tradition of common law no longer solved the moral dilemmas of the new world order, in which England had become, instead of a victim of Catholic enemies, an aggressive force with its own overseas territories. Writers of romance fiction employed narrative strategies in order to resolve this difficulty and, in the process, provided a legal basis for English imperialism. Brian Lockey analyses works by such authors as Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney in the light of these legal discourses, and uncovers new contexts for the genre of romance. Scholars of early modern literature, as well as those interested in the history of law as the British Empire emerged, will learn much from this insightful and ambitious study.

A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature
A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature

Author: Kieran Dolin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-03-15

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 1139461516

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Despite their apparent separation, law and literature have been closely linked fields throughout history. Linguistic creativity is central to the law, with literary modes such as narrative and metaphor infiltrating legal texts. Equally, legal norms of good and bad conduct, of identity and human responsibility, are reflected or subverted in literature's engagement with questions of law and justice. Law seeks to regulate creative expression, while literary texts critique and sometimes openly resist the law. Kieran Dolin introduces this interdisciplinary field, focusing on the many ways that law and literature have addressed and engaged with each other. He charts the history of the shifting relations between the two disciplines, from the open affiliation between literature and law in the sixteenth-century Inns of Court to the less visible links of contemporary culture. Originally published in 2007, this book provides an accessible guide to one of the most exciting areas of interdisciplinary scholarship.

English Law and the Renaissance; the Rede Lecture For 1901
English Law and the Renaissance; the Rede Lecture For 1901

Author: Frederic William Maitland

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13: 9781230261331

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... of Germany in which the law was least Roman and most Germanic. The division of France into two great districts was not equal: before the acquisition of Elsass from Germany 'les pays de droit ecrit comprenaient a peine les deux cinquiemes de la France1 (Planiol, op. cit, vol. I., p. 11). See the useful map in Brissaud, Histoire du droit francais, p. 152. Even in the south there was much customary law. A famous sentence in the custumal of Bordeaux placed'the written law' below 'natural reason' (Viollet, op. cit., p. 150). Still it is not to be denied that a slow process of romanization-- very different from the catastrophic Reception in Germany--went on steadily for some five or six centuries; and a system which as a whole seems very un-Roman to a student of what became ' the common law1 of Germany may rightly seem Roman to an Englishman. Francis Bacon knew that France could not be compendiously described as a country governed by the civil law. In his speech on the Union of Laws (Spedding, Life and Letters, vol. III., P- 337) ne accurately distinguishes 'Gascoigne, Languedock, Provence, Dolphinie' which are 'governed by the letter or text of the civil law' from 'the Isle of France, Tourayne, Berry, Anjou and the rest, and most of all Brittain and Normandy, ' which are 'governed by customs which amount unto a municipal law, and use the civil law but only for grounds and to decide new and rare cases.' English readers should at least know the doctrine, strongly advocated in modern Germany, that the private law which was developed in England by a French-speaking court was just one more French coutume. Sohm, Frankisches Recht und romisches Recht, p. 69: 'Die Vorgeschichte des englischen Rechts von heute hat nicht in England, sondern in..